Amazon-class sloop

The Amazon class was a class of six screw sloops of wooden construction built for the Royal Navy between 1865 and 1866.

HMS Dryad at anchor, with sails airing
Class overview
Name:	Amazon-class sloops
Builders:	Pembroke Dockyard Devonport Dockyard
Operators:	Royal Navy
Built:	1865–1866
In commission:	1865–1885
Completed:	6
Lost:	2
General characteristics
Type:	Screw sloop
Displacement:	1574 tons
Length:	187 ft (57 m)
Beam:	36 ft (11 m)
Draught:	17 ft (5.2 m)[1]
Installed power:	300 horsepower[1]
Propulsion:	Single screw Two-cylinder horizontal single-expansion steam engine
Sail plan:	Barque
Complement:	150[1]
Armament:	As built: 2 × 7-inch (6½-ton) muzzle-loading rifled guns 2 × 64-pounder muzzle-loading rifled guns As converted (Dryad, Nymphe & Vestal): 9 × 64-pounder muzzle-loading rifled guns[2]

Construction

Design

Designed by Edward Reed,[2] the Royal Navy Director of Naval Construction, they were equipped with a ram bow.[2] The hull was of wooden construction, but they were the first class of sloops to incorporate a form of composite construction; they had iron cross beams while retaining wooden framing.[2]

Propulsion

Propulsion was provided by a two-cylinder horizontal single-expansion steam engine by Ravenhill, Salkeld & Company driving a single 15 ft (4.6 m) screw. Vestal and Nymphe were fitted with three-cylinder Maudslay engines.[2]

Sail plan

All the ships of the class were built with a barque rig.[2]

Armament

The class was designed with two 7-inch (6½-ton) muzzle-loading rifled guns mounted on slides on centre-line pivots, and two 64-pounder muzzle-loading rifled guns on broadside trucks. Dryad, Nymphe and Vestal were rearmed in the early 1870s with an armament of nine 64-pounder muzzle-loading rifled guns, four each side and a centre-line pivot mount at the bow.[2]

Ships

Name	Ship Builder	Launched	Fate
Amazon	Pembroke Dockyard	1865	Sunk in collision with SS Osprey, off Start Point, English Channel 10 July 1866[1]
Vestal	Pembroke Dockyard	1865	Sold to Castle for breaking in December 1884[2]
Niobe	Devonport Dockyard	1866	Wrecked off Cape Blanc on Miquelon Island, off the Atlantic Coast of Newfoundland and Labrador 21 May 1874[1]
Dryad	Devonport Dockyard	1866	Sold in September 1885 and broken up in April 1886[2]
Daphne	Pembroke Dockyard	1866	Sold for breaking on 7 November 1882[2]
Nymphe	Devonport Dockyard	1866	Sold for breaking in December 1884[2]

Notes

1. "Cruisers at Battleships-Cruisers website". Retrieved 17 September 2008.
2. Winfield, R.; Lyon, D. (2004). The Sail and Steam Navy List: All the Ships of the Royal Navy 1815–1889. London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-032-6.

Bibliography

• Ballard, G. A. (1938). "British Sloops of 1875: The Wooden Ram-Bowed Type". Mariner's Mirror. Cambridge, UK: Society for Nautical Research. 24 (July): 302–17.
• Chesneau, Roger; Kolesnik, Eugene M., eds. (1979). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860–1905. Greenwich, UK: Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 0-8317-0302-4.
• Colledge, J. J.; Warlow, Ben (2006) [1969]. Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy (Rev. ed.). London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8.
• Winfield, R.; Lyon, D. (2004). The Sail and Steam Navy List: All the Ships of the Royal Navy 1815–1889. London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-032-6.